Process- Sal Meander

Ink & acrylic on canvas

Sal was a bootlegger on the Ohio in the early 1920's, garnering his grim reputation from his cruelty, complexion, and set of tiny needle-sharp teeth.

I made this tiny painting to test an idea for incorporating color into my ink-on-canvas work. My hope is to reduce frustration by laying down color first, as opposed to ruining a perfectly good ink drawing with a sloppy color job at the end. In the end, using an acrylic wash just didn't work as well as I wanted it to. The challenge now is to find a paint that will have the permanence of acrylics and the ability to water down well for backgrounds.

Here's a more specific breakdown of each step.

1- Apply coats of gesso to minimize rough canvas texture (probably could have done even more of this).
2- Rough pencil sketch.
3- Rough acrylic wash.
4- Refined acrylic wash.
5- India ink lines painted over wash.
6- Details added with both india ink and acrylic gesso.
7- Scratch that. Wasn't liking the background and decided to start over.
8- Background with ink wash.
9- Finishing touches.